This special issue of the journal Law in Africa documents and complements a three day conference on Administration of Justice in Africa – Effectiveness, Acceptance and Assistance that took place in Rehburg-Loccum in the northern part of Germany in winter 2007. The conference was organised by the African Law Association in cooperation with and at the Protestant Academy Loccum.
The African Law Association opted for the subject matter of the conference mainly for two reasons: on the one hand, the administration of justice plays a key role for the legal development of a country, but on the other hand, neither jurisprudence nor international development cooperation are paying sufficient attention to it. Therefore the objective was to organise a conference that would summarise existing knowledge of the field, formulate new –and old but unsolved – questions for future scientific projects and gives some useful insight for forthcoming programmes of development co-operation.
The conference consisted of three sections and a panel discussion. All in all ten papers were presented by six scholars from African countries, namely Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania and Nigeria, and four German scholars. A closer look was taken on the administration of justice in select countries in East and West Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and parts of francophone West Africa).
In the first place issues of effectiveness of the administration of justice – of both state justice and the various traditional, religious and informal legal institutions of conflict resolution – were discussed. This led the participants to the second major aspect of the conference: the access to legal systems and the acceptance of justice. Finally the conference intended to take a look at the assistance of administration of justice by international development co-operation.
Table of contents · Table de matières
Oliver Meinecke / Harald Sippel: Administration of Justice in Africa – Introduction
Volker Lohse: Justiz in Afrika – Funktionsfähigkeit, Akzeptanz und Förderungsmöglichkeiten
Kurt Madlener: Conflict Resolution in Sub-Saharan Africa – An Overview
Ulrike Wanitzek: Women’s and Children’s Rights in Africa – A Case Study of International Human Rights and Family Law in Tanzanian Courts
S.K. Date-Bah: Judging in Ghana – Some Reflections
Leopold von Carlowitz: Local Ownership and the Rule of Law in Liberia
Noha Ibrahim: The Right to Fair Trial in the Light of the Interim National Constitution of Sudan Theory and Practice
Chris Maina Peter: Access to Justice – Creating a Role for Paralegals in the Administration of Justice in Africa
Isa Hayatu Chiroma: Making Justice Accessible to the Poor through Development Cooperation – A Case Study of the University of Maiduguri Law Clinic
Christian Grünhagen: Development Cooperation and Assistance for Legal and Judicial Reforms. The Way Forward – Experiences and Perspectives from German Development Cooperation
Hans-Werner Wabnitz: Reforming Legal Reform in Francophone Africa – World Bank’s Project Experience
Bibliography
Some of the contributions to the annual conferences of the African Law Association (Germany) have been published focusing on a special topic, see the following links:
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